The way people talk about it makes it sound indistinguishable from “random will”. If you believe in the existence of a “self” in any form, be it the chemical signals and electrical impulses in your material brain, or a ghost existing outside of space and time controlling your body like a puppeteer, you must believe in one of you believe in that self having free will.
Say you were to run a scenario many times on the same person, perfectly resetting every single measurable thing including that person’s memory. If you observe them doing the same thing each time then they don’t have this quality of free will? But if you do different things each time are you really “yourself”? How are your choices changed in a way that preserves an idea of a “self” and isn’t just a dice roll? Doesn’t that put an idea of free will in contradiction with itself?
Edit: I found this article that says what I was trying to say in much gooder words
This is really more of aporia about selfhood than a proof by contradiction against free will. I mean it is also the latter, but as a side effect.
Anyways the reason I’m saying this is that it has been discussed outside the West (where “free will” in itself is important, especially in Christian theology). For example, the entirety of the Indian philosophical traditions could be described as the questioning the nature of the self.
Buddhism is especially important here. The nature of the self is a tricky question with seemingly vague and contradictory answers. The self neither exists, doesn’t exist, doesn’t exist and not exist both, nor neither… rather it’s a question not to even be answered.
I like these kind of aporetic topics. I believe that in Buddhism the real solution is to experience the truth of a matter personally ie. through meditative insight and enlightenment. Or maybe getting high.
Another way to put it is that it is a linguistic or cognitive issue that requires a perspective shift…maybe Wittgensteinian? That the concept of a self or free will is a limiting one that will lead to holes and contradictions in systems of logic, and are really more useful as a conventional marker for an abstraction. But not reality itself in itself
Do you have a recommendation for something I could read for more information? I do know a very little bit about Buddhist non dualism (think two video essays or so)
I’ll open it up to anyone to follow up on recommendations because I might be a little over the top with it…I like to read the old texts in the original or plain translation. The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā by Nāgārjuna is what I was thinking of when I wrote up my comment.
I would say to find a translation and commentary (the wiki page has a list), and maybe also watch some video lectures before starting because the Buddhist philosophical tradition is its own beast that you would need context for
I’ll see if I can follow up with some video links later